


Pesky Particles

by PaleEmeraldNebula



Category: Angel: the Series, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaleEmeraldNebula/pseuds/PaleEmeraldNebula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While working in her lab at Wolfram & Hart, Fred is visited by a rather strange couple who travel in a strange blue box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pesky Particles

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the very sweet Re-sile! <3

Fred carefully placed a tiny circuit into the socket of a large cylindrical device that rested on the table in front of her. She dropped her pliers next to the device and picked up a handheld tablet. She typed in a few equations before setting the tablet down again to adjust the wires inside the base.

She hummed, not caring what tune her distracted mind conjured up. Pushing her glasses up her face, she peered closer to the crossing of the wires and scrunched up her nose.

“Oh, that’s not right!” She let out a little disappointed whine then started to unhook some of the wires.

The sound of metal dropping on tile echoed from down the hall and she stopped humming. She shifted in her sit and looked around her lab. The only lights currently on were overhead. She swallowed before continuing her hum, this time her voice shook as she hit the high notes. She connected a few wires to the side plating of the cylindrical device, trying hard not to think about being alone in the office at night.

The device lit up and began to rotate and Fred jumped back, letting out a squeak. “That’s not supposed to happen! I have to set the dial sequence before it can even generate the right amount of power to do this!”

She stood and pressed closer to the device, trying to find what went wrong when she heard a whirling and wheezing sound. She turned around to locate the source but her lab remained empty and dark. Air began to spin around the room, sending papers flying, and Fred batted one away from her face.   

A blue police box, something she saw once in a history book about Britain, appeared out of nowhere. She leaned back into her table, eyes wide, as she took in the very odd arrival of a very odd thing. Her glasses slipped from the bridge of her nose as the doors of the police box opened and a thin, tall man with wild brown hair glanced out, keeping one foot inside.

“Is this where all the fuss is coming from, hmm?” he asked with a curious flair and a London accent.

Fred opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again, trying to force a word out. She adjusted her glasses and tried again. A gargling noise came from her throat.

“Cat got your tongue?” The man stepped out of the box and, shoving his hands in his pockets, started forward in her direction. “No worries, I’m the Doctor by the way and this is…” He looked back at the box with a raised eyebrow. “Rose, you coming?”

“Just a tick, yeah?” She heard a muffled woman’s voice call out from inside the box with the same London accent.

The mysterious man who called himself the Doctor turned back to look at Fred and beamed. “Anyway, we were just passing by and my absolutely brilliant, beautiful ship picked up highly dangerous and highly improbably neutrinatic particle waves. They shouldn't exist anymore, they went poof,” he stood on his toes to punctuate the sound effect then dropped back down, “years ago on a planet called Mersh, so you can imagine my surprise when all of sudden-”

A blonde haired woman came out of the police box then, stopping the Doctor mid-sentence. “So what did I miss?” Her cheeks were suffused with a soft blush and she tugged at her clothes to straighten them.

The Doctor turned to Rose and his expression softened as he smiled at her. He made a little happy noise as she came to stand beside him. “I was just explaining to this lovely woman, human I believe, about why we dropped by.”

“And why is that again?” Rose asked.

“The TARDIS picked up neutrinatic particle waves, I couldn't just ignore that! They are highly unstable and dangerous in anyone’s hands besides mine.”

“Right, so saving the world again?”

The Doctor gave her an open mouth grin. “Of course!”

“S-so you two are champions? You help the helpless?” Fred asked, grateful to have found her voice.

The two strangers turned to each other and shrugged with matching humorous frowns. “Close enough I suppose,” the Doctor replied.

“You’re not here to eat me, or take over my body, or send me to a parallel universe where I have to live in a cave?”

The Doctor furrowed his brows as he looked back at her. “No, why would we do that? Do you want to be eaten, or live in a cave?”

Fred giggled, unable to help to keep it in. “No! Definitely not! I had enough time in one cave for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, really. I guess five years doesn't seem so long, but actually experiencing it seemed like a lifetime.”

The Doctor nodded. “Good!” He then reached over her shoulder and plucked the cylindrical device from the table. “Oh, this is a beauty.”

She quickly waved her hands in front of her. “Be careful, it’s highly sensitive to motion and touching it might cause the first layer of skin to conflagrate and then give you a slight case of dermatitis!”

“Doctor?” Rose grabbed his elbow, looking down at his hands in concern.

“Nah, no worries, I’ll be fine.” He tossed the cylinder between his hands. He looked back to Fred, his eyes serious. “Now, about those neutrinatic particle waves, where did you get them?”

“I’m sorry, but I never heard of anything like that before. Do you mean neutrino particles?” Fred tried to give him an apologetic smile.

“Nope!” He said, popping the ‘p” and rolling on his heels. “I mean neutrinatic. It’s no wonder you haven’t heard of it. Like I said, it’s no longer in existence and it’ll be years before humans ever find any sort of trace of it. Well, not anymore, I suppose.”

Fred took a moment to study the couple: they were clean, well spoken, and seemed friendly enough not to appear completely out of their minds.  “Um, is there any way to identify it? I can try to help locate it if it’s hidden away or under a desk or in a drawer. I might be able to use some of Wolfram and Hart’s equipment to-”

“No hold on, did you just say Wolfram and Hart?” The Doctor stretched out his neck to look closer at her.

“Oh, I know, law firm that represents the most evil beings in the world, can’t be good right? But it’s under new management and me and my friends are trying to make a difference so we can help stop evil instead of spreading it.”

Rose tugged at the Doctor’s arm. “Is that true, Doctor?”

He looked up to the ceiling and rubbed the back of his neck before glancing at Rose. “Er, somewhat. What people call demons on Earth are really just aliens, but, well, I never really had to deal with them. Some group of Earth fighters took care of the problem for me, oh, in about three years from now.” He looked at Fred pointedly. “Pretend you didn't hear that.”

Fred’s eyebrows rose to her hairline and she glanced to the corner of the room. “O-kay.”

The Doctor’s eyes swept over the room before settling back on her. “If this is Wolfram and Hart we really should be going, that is, as soon as we find where those neutrinatic particles are. Now I could probably – wait, you mentioned you lived in a cave? Where was that?”

“It was in a parallel dimension. I mean, I know that sounds crazy but I guess since you travel in a disappearing blue police box it might not sound so strange to you, but there really are parallel dimensions out there.” Fred screwed up her face in disgust.

“She sounds like you. I think you found your lost twin, Doctor,” Rose said with an amused grin.

The Doctor looked at Rose with a smile, scrunching up his nose in denial. “I do not have a twin, and I do not sound like that, thank you very much. I’m much too original to copy.” He straightened his tie and focused his attention back to Fred. “Since you've been to a parallel world you might have picked some neutrinatic particles that may have been tucked away in that cave of yours, hitchhiking their way across dimensions. They’re probably lying dormant somewhere in your system, so I doubt you’re in any danger at the moment. Though if you come into contact with any foreign agents that could react to the particles? Boom! You’ll leave a hole on the west coast of the Americas.” He fiddled with his ear before bending slightly forward at the waist. “I have the equipment on my ship to detect it and I can remove it, too. So what do you say about a trip inside?” He nodded to the police box.

Fred looked behind the Doctor and Rose and frowned, showing a bit of her teeth. “It looks kind of small to have the necessary equipment needed for that sort of operation.”

Rose came closer and gently rested her hand on Fred’s shoulder. The blonde woman smiled with her tongue poking out of her corner of her mouth and Fred knitted her brows together at the sudden invasion of her personal space. “It’s alright, it’s bigger on the inside, you’ll see.”

Fred’s eyes widened and her eyebrows shot upward, causing her glasses to fall down her nose. “But that’s impossible! The laws of physics are invariant in all inertial systems so it’s not possible for something to be bigger on the inside!”

The Doctor preened. “Oh, you speak the lingo!”

Rose beamed up at the Doctor. “I told you she sounds like you!” She turned back to Fred and gently pulled her forward. “Come on, you’ll be amazed with what’s behind those doors!”

Rose’s enthusiasm leaked into Fred as the blonde led her to the blue police box. She heard the clink of metal on metal and turned her head to see that the Doctor had put down her cylindrical device to follow them. She turned her head just in time to pass through the wooden doors into a large yellow room with twisting coral struts, grated floors, and a console placed in the middle with turquoise lighting. Her breath caught at the sight and she ignored the urge to run out to check to see if her vision had failed her and the blue box had in fact been bigger before she entered.

She felt eyes on her and turned to her side to see Rose staring with a big smile. “Told you it would be amazing, innit?”

“But-but this is…I mean, wow! It defies so many laws of science for this to be real. I must be dreaming!”

“No,” Rose said as she let out a breath through her smile, “you’re not dreaming. It’s real.”

“Welcome aboard the TARDIS,” the Doctor said from behind them. He stood on the ramp with his hands in his pockets and a very proud expression plastered all over his face. “It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”

Fred whirled around, letting go of Rose’s hand, and gasped. “It can travel in space?”

“It can do more than that,” Rose said from beside her. “It can also travel in time.”

Fred looked back and forth between them both, her smile growing wider and wider the more she thought about the possibilities. “That’s-that  is amazing! You mean we could go back in time to see the actual Feynman Lectures on Physics in the sixties or go back to seventeen sixty one to talk to Johann Heinrich Lambert about how he invented the first practical hygrometer?”

“Fancy a trip, then, after I've scanned your system and taken care of our little neutrinatic problem?” the Doctor asked, but then quickly looked over her shoulder, “What do you say Rose, up for a guest on our little excursion?”

Rose ducked her head and grinned at the Doctor with a quirk of her eyebrow. “With a female version of you, I’d love it.”

Fred steadied her glasses on her face, holding them by the frame with both her hands. “Not to burst anyone’s bubble yet, but I haven’t actually said yes. I do have responsibilities here. My friends rely on me and I have a lot of projects that I’m in charge of. I really couldn't just zip off on an adventure in space and time.” Her thoughts drifted to Wesley before she shook her head and let go of her glasses.

The Doctor walked past her towards the door at the opposite end of the room. “Tell you what: take your time, however long you need, then let me know once we’re done. It’s a special one time offer. And I can make sure to land us back here not even five minutes past when we left.”

Fred drew her eyebrows together and lowered her chin. “You can do that?”

“On one of his good days, he can.” Rose said with a hint of a tease in her voice.

They followed the Doctor down a corridor as he said, “Oi, I am completely able to land us here right on time, down to the very second. I’m a Time Lord not a Sometimes, maybe, on occasion Lord.”

“Twelve months and a hundred years off ring any bells, Sir Doctor?”

“Those were special cases. And that’s only twice.”

Fred covered her mouth with her hand to hide a snicker. It would be nice to travel with these two. “You guys make a cute couple.”

Rose and the Doctor grew quiet until they rounded a corner and the Doctor almost shouted. “Ah, here we are: my multi-particle spatial equipment room. I hardly ever use it anymore, so I suppose I might not have completely been sure that it was still where I last left it.”

“What does that even mean? Why wouldn't it be where you last left it?” Fred blinked a few times in confusion.

“The TARDIS is sentient, sometimes she feels like moving rooms,” Rose supplied, leaning into Fred’s shoulder.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. A ship that can travel through space and time,” she whirled to face the Doctor before turning back to Rose, “and I think the Doctor’s an alien, so really I just have to further stretch my definition of normal. Next you’ll probably tell me the ship goes on indefinitely and that you have a sun as a power generator.”

“Well, I am, it does, and I do,” the Doctor said as he stood at the center of the room. He patted the examination seat beside him. “Moving on, we should really get you checked out. Don’t want to keep you in danger or those around you in danger, do we?”

“I probably shouldn't trust you this easily. I've been through enough to know that this exactly how people are abducted and experimented on and other rather unseemly things.” She tilted her head to the side and looked down at the floor. “Maybe we can take some of these things back outside to my lab?”

The Doctor let out an irritated breath. “How about this, you go ahead and look around. Poke at anything that catches your interest and if you see anything here that changes your mind, I’ll whip something up for us to take outside.”

Fred stood still for a moment, studying the room, and contemplating her choices. “Alright, deal!” She jumped, grinning, and headed straight for the nearest piece of equipment.

The items, tools, and devices were things she had never seen or dreamed of before. She turned on one or two and watched with rapt attention as they moved or buzzed. She examined each corner of the room, taking her time, a smile near leaving her face.

Fred looked over to the Doctor, who stood beside Rose, and they both wore matching expressions. Their faces were soft and full of understanding. They looked like decent people. And all they wanted to do was save her and maybe countless others by getting rid of some weird particles that she never heard of. Okay, maybe she trusted them too easily, but she trusted Angel and that saved her life.

She eased onto the examination seat and nodded to the Doctor. “I’m ready.”

“Brilliant,” he said with a wide grin.

Rose came to stand beside her and took her hand. “You’ll be alright; the Doctor has a gentle touch.” Fred smiled at Rose, squeezing her hand in reassurance.

“I guess you would know, huh?” Fred’s cheeks burned as the words left her mouth and she ducked her head at the implication.

Rose didn't reply, but her face turned pink and Fred said no more.

The Doctor flicked a few switches, aimed a device right at the center of her body, and waggled his eyebrows in her direction. “Here we go!”

The device shone a beam of light at her heart and within seconds a red ribbon of dust crawled out of her body and the light sucked it up with relish. It entered the device and the moment she could no longer see the red ribbon, the Doctor turned off the light, tossed the equipment in a bin, and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he looked back at her.

“All done! And in case you hadn't noticed, the particles  were hanging out inside your system. Now, they’ll be calling that bin over there their home, easy peasy for someone like myself and my magnificent ship. No more danger, no more nasty particles where they shouldn't be.”

“That’s it?” Fred asked.

“That’s it.” The Doctor fiddled with his ear. “So, decided to take a trip with us?”

“It’ll be fun, I promise,” Rose said with a wink.

Fred bit back a smile, climbing down off the seat and meeting Rose’s gaze nervously. “I think I should think about it some more, maybe once we get to the bridge?”

“Once you’re out the doors, offers invalid. And it’s the console room, by the way. Bridge makes it sound like we’re in some cheesy Sci-Fi drama.” The Doctor led them out of the room and back through the corridors.

“And you’ll have me back here five minutes after I leave, even though we might be gone days?”

“Yup!” the Doctor said cheerfully.

Rose sniggered and the Doctor elbowed the blonde’s side.

When they entered the console room, Fred stood beside the turquoise lit controls, her hands itching to touch the buttons before her. One trip wouldn't hurt. “Okay! Let’s do it!”

Rose took her hand again and beamed at her. “You won’t regret it!”

“Molto bene! Hang on tight, ‘cause we’re going to show you things you've never imagined!” The Doctor danced around the console, pulling levers, hitting the panel with a mallet, and in general looking a bit crazy. Fred laughed and soon Rose and the Doctor joined her.


End file.
